


The Shadow Wore Him Like A Glove

by ShadowKnight



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Animal Death, Bad Ending, Gore, Graphic Descriptions of Death and Violence, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Rape Threats, Ritual Sacrifice, Suicide, Violence, dark!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowKnight/pseuds/ShadowKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny and Scott are just married and moving into a new home. Danny is a necromancer. He can see ghosts and bring the dead back to life. Scott dies, so Danny brings him back. But Scott comes back... as less of himself. As Scott continues dying and Danny refuses to let him go, tragedy strikes the formerly idyllic couple and Danny soon finds himself fighting for his life from a sadistic evil wearing Scott's body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shadow Wore Him Like A Glove

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS A DARK!FIC THAT DOES NOT END WELL. IT IS EQUAL PARTS HORROR AND TRAGEDY.
> 
> Just putting that in big capital letters at first in case that's a turn-off for you.
> 
> Inspired by [this tumblr post](http://shadowknight1224.tumblr.com/post/53538015472/mchealani-wear-my-shadow-teen-wolf-au-its). Danny's powers/necromancer status are very vaguely and distantly inspired by Geist: The Sin-Eaters. If you don't know what that is, don't worry, it won't affect your enjoyment of the story.

The first time Scott dies, it’s by complete accident. 

It happens so fast that Danny doesn’t even realise Scott’s dead until he sees the blood.

Everything was going so well. They were laughing, trading cute innuendo, having fun. They had just moved into their new house and Scott was stuffing winter clothes into the upper shelves of their walk-in closet. The ladder is rickety, but Scott insists it’s fine. It won’t give. He can handle it. He climbs higher. The ladder creaks, but holds. “See?”

Danny goes out into the hallway outside the master bedroom to bring the box labeled “BATHROOM” to where it belongs. Scott climbs higher. The ladder creaks again, menacingly. Danny walks back into the bedroom and gets distracted by gorgeous view. The autumn trees sway gently in the mid-morning breeze. Danny liked that the house was surrounded by trees. Even though it was close to the road, the trees around it made it feel isolated, gave it privacy and solitude. Despite knowing that he had neighbours but a handful of yards away, Danny felt secluded and peaceful. The ladder cracks and gives way, but Danny doesn’t hear it. His eyes are lost in the reds and golds outside the window. He thinks about how much he likes the quiet of the place. No ghosts or restless spirits.

Scott falls. His head hits one of the solid wooden shelves, and there is a loud, wet crack. The closet is on the other end of the bathroom; and their bathroom, as bathrooms usually do, has a strange echo that distorts sound, so Danny only hears a soft thump. He guesses Scott dropped one of the boxes, or perhaps bumped his elbow on one of the shelves. It isn’t until he finally brings the box he was carrying to the bathroom that he glances at the closet and sees Scott lying down on the floor. Danny freezes, leaves the box on the sink and blinks, torn between worry and disbelief. Scott is fine, right? It’s just a fall. He would just hurt a leg or something, right?

And then Danny sees the blood. It’s dark in the dim penumbra of the closet, almost black, and it scares him so much that his knees give way and he falls to the cold tiles in all fours. He crawls to Scott breathlessly, numb, his heart racing painfully in his chest. Scott’s eyes are open, the pupils are different sizes, and his mouth gapes slightly, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. Scott is very, very pale and the pool of blood around his head seems to go on forever. It looks almost black against the wooden floor of the closet, but turns scarlet-red against the white tiles of the bathroom. Danny crawls over the blood and it feels warm and slippery and Danny wants to scream, as loud as he can.

He reaches Scott too late, when his lips stop quivering and his pupils go wide. Danny touches him, flips him over, and sees that the left side of Scott’s head is a soaked mess. The matted hair makes it difficult to see, but Danny thinks he can see the glistening white of bone or brain matter. His stomach churns and he almost throws up, but he manages to will himself to stay. He touches Scott’s chest, right over his sternum. Danny hasn’t used his power in years, but he doesn’t think twice. He knows he shouldn’t, but this is _Scott_. His husband, the love of his life. The man he would rather die than spend life without.

So he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and _calls_. It’s a silent siren’s call, an ethereal humming that draws the nether’s soul-strings to him. He reaches into the air and grasps one. In the real world, his hand clutches nothing but air, but in Danny’s mind, he holds a string of raw spiritual energy. He pulls the string down, binds it around Scott’s body. It’s ritualistic and methodic and Danny calls no names, invokes no deities or spirits, because his grandmother taught him that black magic was a sin. And that if you’re gonna sin, you better make damn sure nobody sees you.

Danny calls Scott’s full name three times, kisses his chest, and whispers a secret in the tongue of the dead. That’s the price, a secret, cast into the nether like a message in a bottle, to be hoarded by frozen wraiths and dark spectres. The lights of the entire house go out, and Danny knows it worked. Relief sinks into him and he lets out a shaky breath. It’s almost over. He lets go of the soul-string and grasps at the darkness instead. It feels cold. It always feels cold. He draws the darkness into Scott, suffusing him with ill-gotten life.

There is a wet, grinding sound as unseen wounds heal. Scott draws a loud breath and groans with obvious pain.

“Danny?” the first word that this newborn Scott utters is Danny’s name, and it could not bring Danny’s heart any more joy. It’s dark, but the bathroom door is open and the mid-morning sun glints off the tiles. Scott rises to a sitting position.

Danny lets out a relieved sigh and wraps his arms around a confused, groggy Scott. He buries his face in Scott’s neck, breathes in the scent of aftershave and blood, feels the warmth against his skin, the quickened heartbeat against his lips.

“What happened?” Scott asks, disoriented. “Is this... did I... fall?”

“Yeah, but you’re okay,” Danny replies quickly, rubbing firm circles on Scott’s back. “You’re fine, I got you on time.”

“What? How?”

“Shhh, we’ll talk about it later,” Danny whispers, hugging Scott even tighter. “Let’s just stay like this for a while.”

Scott hugs him back, but it’s a limp, hesitant thing. Danny doesn’t mind. He chalks that up to shock.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Danny comes up with a white lie for Scott. He says his mediumship lets him heal people under very specific circumstances. He doesn’t tell Scott that he can only do it to the recently deceased. Danny just wants to forget. He wants to scrub the memory away like he scrubbed the blood from the floor with hydrogen peroxide. And, for a while, it works. They complete their moving (under Danny’s extra watchful eye), they fall into a nice routine, and Danny can finally work in peace, from home, without dealing with vengeful shades and manipulative ghosts.

Scott is distant. Danny tries to pretend it’s just the shock, but it doesn’t take him long to realise how much deeper than that it runs. Scott is less affectionate, less enthusiastic, less coordinate, less... everything. Danny hates it. He stares at Scott from the other end of the table at their breakfast nook, and watches as Scott stares out the window vacantly.

“I love you,” Danny utters in the early morning silence.

Scott turns to him and smiles. “I love you too,” he says, but it doesn’t feel the same.

Danny goes upstairs to the bedroom that he turned into an office. Danny makes enough money to support them both (and afford Victorian three-bedroom houses in a quiet corner of rural New England), so Scott is very much a stay-at-home husband. They were even thinking of adopting, if they found a place where Danny’s medium gift wouldn’t cause complications. Danny boots up his computer and resists the urge to shatter the window with a punch. Instead, he opens it and lets a chilly breeze in. The office looks over the backyard, and the auburn tones of falling leaves call him down. A few stray clouds roll lazily across the sky, and Danny finds in their serenity a focus that he lacked.

He thinks of using black magic again.

It sounds logical in his head. He has the steps down pat. He’s going to make a blood sacrifice (who’s going to miss a stray cat? Scott wouldn’t approve, but what Scott doesn’t know can’t hurt him), and perform a calling to find that stray bit of Scott’s soul that slipped away. It will happen at midnight, when Scott’s already asleep, and he’s going to do it in the back deck, under the light of the moon.

Scott is so busy with all the different things that need to be arranged in the new home that he’s out like a light by ten. Danny goes downstairs quietly and slips into the woods through the backdoor. He retrieves the slumbering body of the cat he sedated earlier that day and brings it to the deck. Setting up the ritual takes him a fairly long time. There are runes that need to be drawn with his own blood, burnt offerings that need to be made and sigils need to be carved into clay. By the time he begins humming the ethereal call, it’s almost midnight. He grabs a kitchen knife and stares at the sleeping cat. It’s skinny and mangy. Nobody will miss it.

Danny thinks of Scott and how he’d feel bad for days for every poor dead animal. He’d adopt strays and find them good homes, and he’d go visit them later and bring treats for everyone. Those were the days, Danny thinks. Ever since moving into the thrice-accursed house, everything has been going wrong.

Danny sighs. He has to do it. For Scott. He’d do anything to get the old Scott back.

And we do such evil things for love.

The cat doesn’t stir at all when the knife comes down. The drugs are potent; and for that, Danny is deeply grateful. It doesn’t suffer, and it’s the least he can do to honour Scott’s gentleness. As the threads manifest around Danny, he calls Scott’s full name three times and implores for his soul in the tongue of the dead. There is no answer. No wisp of white aether appears for Danny to take hold of.

The following morning, Scott remains the same. While Scott is out grocery shopping, Danny locks himself in the bathroom, curls up on the floor and cries until Scott gets back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The second time Scott dies, it’s carbon monoxide. Another accident.

Scott goes to take a nap on their bedroom. It’s a very cold afternoon, and Scott has always hated cold. He seals the doors and windows tightly, to avoid chilly wind currents, turns on the heater and goes to sleep. But it’s the first time they turn on the heaters in the house, and they don’t check for faulty ventilation or incomplete combustion. When Danny opens the door and enters the bedroom, he feels immediately light-headed from the lack of oxygen. He starts opening the windows, trying to get some air circulation going and scolding Scott aloud. When Scott doesn’t reply, Danny worries.

A fruitless attempt to wake him up later and Danny realises Scott’s dead again. This time, Danny hesitates before bringing him back to life. He doesn’t want things to get any worse. But he considers life without Scott, _seriously_ considers it, and the pain is so overwhelming that he almost doubles over. He’d rather have a hollow shadow of Scott than no Scott at all.

So he brings him back. Danny doesn’t tell Scott about dying, and instead plays it off as just waking him up. Scott looks a bit distrustful, but quickly shrugs it off. Too quickly.

The days go by in a dreary gray fog. Scott, predictably, is even less of himself than usual. He almost never smiles, doesn’t speak much, doesn’t laugh at all. He ambles around purposelessly, doing as he’s told and little else. He sleeps over twelve hours a day. Danny tried kissing him once, and the lackluster response broke Danny’s heart.

One day, the anger and frustration, the helplessness and injustice of it all, they get to Danny. He picks up an axe and heads into the woods. He spends the day furiously chopping at trees, tearing big chunks of wood with the axe but not really bringing them down. The area around his rage fit looks like the center of a storm of blades, with trees sporting deep gouges at random heights and from different angles.

Danny comes home sore, sweaty and tired. Scott doesn’t notice.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The third time Scott dies, it’s murder.

They have a break-in in the middle of the night. Danny hears it first, and wakes up Scott. Danny grabs his grandmother’s silver knife, the one he keeps in his nightstand drawer. Scott picks up a baseball bat he never used.

They go downstairs and find the burglar in the grand room, unplugging their flatscreen. Danny yells at him and he turns around. He’s a young thing, barely out of high school. Messy dark blond hair, watery blue eyes. He’s short and looks scared as fuck. Danny’s fear lessens. He can fix this.

He stares hard at the intruder and makes use of one of his dark talents. He pictures an old lock with an antique key in it. He pictures the key turning. He hears the gears unlocking, and welcomes the flood of information.

“It’s okay, Matt,” Danny says, securing his knife on the elastic band of his boxers. “We’re not going to tell anyone.”

“Wh-what? How did you know my name?” the intruder stutters out, his eyes widening even more.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Danny says, taking a careful step closer. “We have money upstairs. We can give you what you need to cover the debt. Your mother will be fine,” Danny continues, feeling the words of unearned knowledge burning in his mind.

“How do you know that?!” Matt flips out, digging his hand into his clothes. He lifts his black sweater and Danny sees the glint of metal. Before he can say anything, Matt has a gun pulled on them.

“Whoa there!” Danny exclaims, lifting his hands up. “This doesn’t have to get ugly.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, his voice quivering. His eyes are teary.

Danny blinks, disbelieving. He’s not going to shoot. He’s just a kid.

Danny hears the shot, but he doesn’t see it, because a dark figure tackles Matt right as his finger tightens around the trigger. He looks down and sees Scott, collapsed on top of Matt. He hears a laboured grunt, and knows it’s not Scott. Matt’s gun is a few inches away from his hand. Danny kicks it away, instinctively.

“Scott!” he hears himself yelling, and kneels by the two men. Scott’s eyes are closed, and there’s blood pooling around them.

The rage that Danny feels at that moment is something that, later on, in retrospect, would scare the living daylights out of him. He doesn’t merely see red. He doesn’t see at all. When he regains some measure of awareness, he’s on top of Matt, hands wrapped around the kid’s throat, and squeezing so hard he feels the windpipe crushing under his fingers. He feels scratches all over his chest and arms, but they don’t even sting. And then he feels the silver knife sliding out of his boxers. He stops strangling Matt and pins his hand down to the bloodsoaked floor. The kid’s eyes are bloodshot. He was almost dead when Danny finally let his neck go. There are ugly welts all over it, too. A scarf of red and purple around his throat. Danny feels proud, but it’s not over yet.

Taking the silver knife back is almost child’s play. Matt barely has any strength left. Danny raises the knife. Matt’s lips move, his eyes are pleading. _Don’t do it, please._

Too late, Danny thinks. _You killed my husband._

He sinks the knife into Matt’s throat, and tears it out with an arc of blood. The wound sprays blood once, twice, thrice, and then it’s reduced to a steady trickle. Matt’s body goes slack. Danny watches the lights of the kid’s eyes go out underneath him.

Danny felt pity for the kid, until he shot. Now Danny feels nothing but disgust and contempt.

It takes him awhile for Danny to recover his wits, come down from the adrenaline high and turn to Scott.

Scott.

Danny thinks long and hard about this one. If it’s worth it. If it’s not better to just let it go. He wants to let it go, he really does. He makes a plan to call the police, to explain what happened. It’s self-defence, after all. Or temporary insanity. There will be a lengthy trial, and grief counselling, and he will sell the house and move away. Jackson and Lydia will be there for him, and maybe even Stiles. Allison will offer her support, too. She knows what it’s like to see a loved one murdered in front of one’s eyes.

Danny raises to his feet, the knife clattering to the floor. He’s covered in blood from the chest down. Scott’s, Matt’s, his own. The scratches on his body are deep, and when the adrenaline fades, he starts to feel the sting. He walks towards the phone, dripping blood along the way. He reaches for the receiver, his hand soaked in Matt’s blood. He turns to look at Scott’s body and his hand freezes. He looks at Scott’s face. It looks almost peaceful. And that’s when he realises that he can’t do it. He can’t go on without Scott. Not when he has a chance to bring him back.

He jumped. Of his own volition. He wanted to save Danny, to give his life for him. That was love. Even if it was just an echo, nothing but a faded shadow, it was still real. It was still there. Scott loved him. And Danny couldn’t let him go.

So Danny brings him back again.

This time, Danny has to come clean to Scott. There’s no way to fabricate a white lie around it. Scott insists on knowing the truth and Danny caves. Danny comes clean about everything. He tells Scott how many times he died, and how he just couldn’t let him go. But it’s going to be okay, Danny says over and over. They’re going to find someone to fix this, he assures Scott.

Scott doesn’t say anything. He just starts walking to the laundry room to get the worst of the blood out.

Danny sits on the floor, numb, of a while. He then looks at Matt’s body and knows he has to hide it. He can’t call the authorities, not with a shot fired and the bullet just lying there on the floor, and too much blood for just one person (not to mention the DNA testing). The entire case is flimsier than a house of cards. He’d get nailed with murder and Scott would get roped in as an accomplice.

So Danny goes outside with a shovel and digs out the cat’s grave. He excavates deeper and deeper, until the hole is almost twice as deep as he is tall, and he needs a ladder to climb out. He drags Matt’s body outside through the back door and dumps it there. It’s almost dawn, so Danny hurries filling up the hole until it’s only a couple of feet deep. He drops the rotting carcase of the cat he sacrificed and finishes filling it up. He makes a mental note to buy a sapling and plant it on top, just in case.

And then there’s the house. The blood is everywhere. The floor, the walls, the furniture, there are even a few drops on the ceiling. Danny sends Scott out to buy several bottles of hydrogen peroxide and gets to cleaning. By the time he’s done, the house is spotless. Some of it, he takes out back (the curtains, his underwear, Scott’s sleeping sweatpants, one of the armchairs) and burns it in a bonfire.

Danny spends the entire day cleaning. The following day, he reads in the newspaper that a local woman was found dead, her home ransacked and bank accounts emptied. It takes him some time to realise that the woman’s last name matches Matt’s. He feels a pang of guilt at that, but buries it deep. There was nothing he could have done.

As the days go by, Scott gets less and less responsive. He begins to eat less and less, and sleep more and more. Danny goes on a frenzied search for someone with answers. He tries the little black book he inherited from his grandmother, full of names and addresses and phone numbers, but they’re so old that most of the people there have died or moved away. And the scant few people he manages to get in contact with have no answers. He manages to find a woman named Erica. She’s like him.

“Yeah, I’ve been there,” she says through the phone. “It’s really sad.”

“But did you find a way to get them back to how they were originally?” Danny asks, and hopes against hope.

“No, sorry. It just got worse and worse,” she admits sadly, and he can tell it’s personal.

“So you just... stopped calling him back,” Danny ventures, hesitantly.

“Yeah. I just let him go. I couldn’t watch him like that. I had to let him go,” she says, her voice cracking in the end.

“Sorry. And don’t you know of anyone who might have found a way to bring them back whole?” Danny tries again, one last-ditch attempt.

“Every case I’ve heard ends up the same way,” she explained dejectedly. There was a pause. “You know what happens if you don’t let him go, right?”

“Yeah,” Danny replied with a sigh. “I’m trying to avoid getting to that point.”

“If there was a way to bring them back safely, we would’ve heard of it by now,” Erica added. “It’s just not meant to be, Danny. We’re messing with God’s design.”

“I don’t believe in God,” Danny replied tersely.

“Well, then Fate, Karma, the Loa, the laws of nature, whatever you want to call it.” She paused. “We both know it, Danny. It’s unnatural. And it comes with a price.”

“I know,” Danny rasped out. “Thanks for the help, Erica. Goodbye.”

Danny hung up the phone with shaking hands.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The fourth time Scott dies, it’s suicide.

It blindsides Danny as he’s taking a coffee break. He goes downstairs to the kitchen and there’s Scott, looking out the breakfast nook’s bow-window, with Matt’s gun in his hand. Danny gasps, suddenly realising that he lost track of Matt’s gun after he brought Scott back and never remembered to look for it. Scott had taken it.

“S-Scott?” Danny stutters as he takes slow, careful steps towards his husband.

Scott doesn’t reply. He just stares out the window, a blank expression on his face. The window is open, and a cold morning wind tousles his shaggy, overgrown hair.

Danny takes a few steps closer, and when he’s almost at arm’s length, Scott fully turns to him. The overwhelming sorrow in Scott’s eyes freezes Danny in mid-step.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” Scott utters quietly, his voice broken and hollow. “I love you.”

Danny knows he only has one chance to say something before something horrible happens.

“I can fix this, Scott,” Danny says, pleading, feeling his eyes getting watery. It can’t end like this. Not like this. “Please, Sc-” but a gunshot cuts Danny off. The mist of blood, with bits of hair, bone and brain matter, goes right out the open window. Only some fine blood splatter remains on the white window frame. Scott’s body also slumps towards the window, and he falls on the sill, doubled over, his mess of a head gushing blood onto the soaked grass. The gun falls onto the kitchen floor with a heavy thump.

Danny doesn’t think. He just acts. He can fix this. He can. He just needs some time. He needs to do more research, consult more sources, find an old shaman or dark priest. Someone will have the answer. And so he brings Scott back for the last time.

Nobody ever told Danny how to measure the death of a soul. How to gauge how much was left of a person after every resurrection tore a piece of their soul away. So Danny doesn’t realise that it might be six times for some, ten for others, and four for yet someone else.

This time, when Danny pulls the darkness into Scott and the wounds knit back together, something feels _wrong_. Danny ignores it, out of a desperate urge to abjure any more awfulness out of his life. He grabs the gun that Scott dropped and tucks into the waistband of his jeans. He turns to Scott, who is rising to his feet, and then he sees it. The blackness. The pure, thick darkness in his eyes. No more puppy-brown eyes. No more innocent, amiable gaze. There was nothing in those eyes but unfathomable evil.

“Hello, Danny,” says the thing inhabiting Scott’s body. “I want to thank you,” it says, but while the voice is Scott’s, the intonation is all different. It’s harsh and cruel. “I’ve been wanting to feel again for a long, long time.”

The word escapes Danny’s lips like a prayer. “Revenant.”

Scott smiles. “It is always the same with people like you,” he says, tapping a bloodied chin. “All that power corrupts you. And you can never let go.”

“No,” Danny whispers, and his chest feels like it’s so tight it might actually crush his heart. “No. I can...”

“...fix this?” Scott utters, amused. “Oh, Danny,” he adds, shaking his head with a sardonic smile. “This is beyond fixing.”

Scott takes a step forward and Danny steps back instinctively. He reaches for the gun at his waistband.

“Go ahead,” Scott urges him. “You know revenant lore. Unless that gun is loaded with silver bullets, they’re barely gonna tickle me.”

Danny takes the gun out anyway. Scott opens his arms, as if to say ‘go on, shoot.’ Danny does. He fires, over and over, until he hears the clickclickclick of the empty magazine. Scott’s chest is riddled with small holes. No blood oozes from them.

“Satisfied?” Scott asks, taking another step forward. Danny steps back again. “Oh, this is going to be fun,” the revenant tells Danny, smiling cruelly. “I haven’t fucked in years,” he drawls, as he slowly advances towards Danny and Danny takes stunned step backwards after stunned step backwards. “I’m going to fuck you harder than you two ever fucked each other.” A hellish pause, as the holes in Scott’s chest spit out the bullets, some whole, some crumpled. “And I’m going to _make_ you enjoy it. Scott knows exactly what to do to,” the revenant threatens, dragging his fingers across the kitchen countertop as the holes on his chest heal without leaving the trace of a scar behind. Danny is almost at the dining room door. He can run. He can escape. “You’re gonna be so ashamed.” Then Scott’s voice drops down a whole octave, and it becomes charged with lust. “I hope you cry. Damn, I want to see you cry.”

That is exactly as much as Danny’s crumbling sanity can take. He turns around and sprints to the dining room. He thinks Scott will sprint right after, but he doesn’t hear any thumping steps on the dining room hardwood. Danny reaches the front door and pulls the door knob, only to find it locked. He looks around for the keys. The little table next to the door has nothing. His keys are upstairs. And Scott’s...?

Sheer dumb luck makes Danny turn his head slightly to the right, so that the dining room door is within his field of vision. And that twist of fortune lets him see Scott at the doorframe, with something long, sharp and shiny in his hand. Danny gasps as fear seizes his chest and his knees start to shake. He scrambles for the stairs, but he trips on the first step and he collapses. Thank fuck the stairs are carpeted, or else he would’ve broken his jaw on the edge of one the steps. He hears Scott calmly walking behind him, and he scrambles up the steps like an animal.

He heads to his office and closes the door behind him, but it doesn’t have a lock. Danny sticks a chair under the doorknob, but he knows that won’t deter Scott for long. He grabs the keys to the front door the moment Scott slams against the office door for the first time, making the chair crack. Danny heads to the utility closet and, past it, to the bathroom shared between the office and the guest bedroom. Scott slams against the door for the second time and the chair gives way. Danny closes the bathroom door, which has a lock. But it’s flimsy. Very flimsy. Another slam and visible cracks appear on the wood of the door before him. Danny hurries to the guest bedroom, planning on taking the stairs down while Scott is distracted.

But the revenant is cunning. When Danny comes out to the hallway, he sees Scott on the office door’s frame, kitchen knife glinting in his hand. The stairs are closer to the office than the bedroom, so Danny knows there’s no way he can beat Scott to them. So he closes the guest bedroom door and drives a chair under the doorknob like he did before. Not two seconds later, he hears another slam against the shared bathroom’s door. Danny chances a peek. Long, thick cracks run through the door from top to bottom. A couple good slams and it will be splinters. He needs to think. He can do this. He can outsmart this undead creature and escape.

He looks at the guest bedroom’s closet. Yes. The secret passage. That will do.

Danny enters the closet and closes the door behind him. He fumbles in the dark, feeling the wall with his fingers as he hears another slam and the gut-wrenching crack of wood. Danny can’t find the hidden indentation in the wall, the one that releases the locking mechanism and lets the wall pivot on a central axis. Another slam and Danny knows the door is no more. He hears Scott’s calm, unhurried steps on the other side of the closet door. Which has no lock. If Scott were to open the closet door on a whim, Danny would be helpless. Danny’s fingers continue to fumble. He has only been shown the mechanism once, and he doesn’t remember exactly where the indentation was. Fortunately for him, Scott’s steps head towards the guest bedroom.

But he knows they won’t be gone for long.

When he finally finds the indentation and the wall pivots, Scott’s steps are at the closet door. Danny slips into the linen closet (which opens to the hallway) and closes the secret passage behind him. Scott opens the closet door to find nothing but darkness.

Danny makes it out of the linen closet as quietly as possible. He creeps towards the stairs slowly. Too slowly. By the time he makes it to the top of the stairs, he sees the guest bedroom door opening. He hurries downstairs, sure that Scott has seen him, and begins to fumble with the keys to the front door. He’s already downstairs by the time Scott even realises something’s wrong.

Danny heads to the car unconsciously, like any desperate person. It’s not until he reaches the car door that he remembers he has no idea where the car keys are. Danny punches the car door in a fit of pique, denting it, and curses. Scott might have them, for all he knows. This is a disaster. He could try running, but the nearest house is at least two miles away, and Scott would be right behind him. One unlocked door or window and whoever helped him would be at the mercy of an unkillable Scott and his knife. And even if he did get help, what would he do? Call the police? And watch them waste round after round of gunfire on an undead creature? On a body of unholy flesh held together by ectoplasm and the will of a vengeful spectre? It would be a massacre.

Danny turns towards the door and sees Scott leaning on the doorframe, picking at the dirt under his fingernails with the knife. Danny lets out his breath in a heart-stopping, strangled yelp. He doesn’t even think, he just bolts towards the back of the house. Scott runs along the porch to try and catch him, but Danny uses a fallen log to propel himself forward and manages to put some distance between himself and Scott with a well-timed leap. He makes it to the back deck, makes a sharp turn towards the double-doors, slips on the wood, still wet with morning dew, and falls on his side, slamming his left hip against the floor. He scrambles to his feet without even noticing the pain, gets into the house and locks the double doors behind him. Scott makes it to the deck, smiles at Danny and continues running around the house.

Danny turns left, towards the back door near the laundry room, and races to lock it before Scott can beat him to it. He pauses for a few moments, panting raggedly, lungs burning, as he peers through the panelled glass in the door, looking for signs of Scott.

It hits him, almost too late, that the front door is still wide open.

Danny races to the central hallway and scampers madly across it, almost slipping and falling, to slam it shut. He reaches into his pocket with shaky hands and after several tries, manages to take out the keys and lock the door. Danny looks around, still panting, and a cold fear grips him as he realises Scott could have silently slipped inside the house while he was wasting time at the back door.

Danny moves towards the grand room. It’s a big, open room, with tall windows and a big chimney in the middle. It has a sofa and a few armchairs, plus assorted furniture. Not exactly full of places to hide, unless Scott is crouching behind an armchair. Danny walks back to the main hall and leans into the dining room. Another room without many hiding spots, but by then Scott could have moved on to the kitchen or even further back.

Danny’s heart is racing and it _hurts_ , the adrenaline making his knees shake in spite of himself. He leans his back against a wall. He needs to think of a plan. He needs to get rid of Scott permanently, or at least trap him somewhere he can’t hurt anybody. And then he remembers. He can do it. He can lay a trap.

Danny opens the cupboard under the stairs and rummages around the bags and boxes. He grabs the sack of salt and whispers in relief. He only needs one more ingredient, but he stops to look around for Scott. He doesn’t want the revenant to sneak up on him. Danny’s skin feels clammy from the cold sweat. His hands shake as he fumbles for the last sack. When he finally pulls it out of the dark, dank cupboard, he can’t contain the sigh of relief. Danny looks around nervously again, but still no signs of Scott. Danny wonders if maybe he _did_ beat Scott to the front door... but that just makes him wonder if he left any windows unlocked. It’s all the same, in the end. Danny wants Scott to come get him.

It takes Danny a while to set up the trap, pouring white salt from one of the sacks and black mountain ash powder from the other, as he looks nervously around in case Scott is watching him. The admixture goes between the floorboards, in thin, almost invisible lines across the floor. Danny leaves a section of the floor, near the door to the cupboard under the stairs, unfinished. If he closes the circle, the trap will be set, and Danny doesn’t want that just yet. So Danny hides in the cupboard, hand full of salt and mountain ash. And he waits in the dark.

It’s not long until he hears the footsteps outside the door. He hears a soft scratch on the wood, Scott running the tip of the knife against the door. The dark spectre inside Scott’s body is probably enjoying every ounce of terror he extracts from Danny. But that’s all about to end.

Danny pours part of the handful on the floor, leans down and blows it under the door. He hears the revenant hissing in pain. That’s his cue. Danny slams the door open, throwing Scott off balance, and leaps away from the angry undead. He turns around outside the area covered in salt and mountain ash, and throws the remaining admixture on the part of the floor he had left deliberately untouched. The amount is excessive, compared to the nearly invisible lines between the floorboards that make up the rest of the circle, but it’s of no importance. Scott is trapped.

“Salt and mountain ash?” Scott scoffs, brushing his legs and feet and then wiping his hands on the hallway wall. “A mighty necromancer, stooping to hedge witch trickery.”

“Trickery that works,” Danny breathes out, heart racing, and tries to keep his voice from shaking too much. He tries to remind himself that he has the advantage now, he has the upper hand.

“Hmph,” Scott utters disdainfully. “It won’t do you a lot of good, though.” Scott lifts his shirt to reveal the hilt of Danny’s grandmother’s knife poking out of the waistband of his jeans. “You can’t kill me without this. There’s nothing else in the house made of silver.”

Danny gasps and his hand involuntarily reaches forward, then freezes in mid-motion. He stands there, eyes wide open, frozen. His hand drifts down slowly, mournfully. Suddenly the advantage has lessened to a standstill.

“You don’t have to do this,” the revenant says suggestively, adopting a casual, harmless posture. “You can let me go, I won’t hurt you.” Danny almost laughs at that, manages a raspy bark instead. “Look, I’ll prove it to you,” Scott adds with a charming smile, and grabs the kitchen knife blade first, then casually drops it behind him, outside the circle. “See? We can just talk about all this.”

Danny looks at the revenant with complete incredulity. Does the spectre inside Scott’s undead body truly think him so stupid? Instead, Danny rubs his chin absentmindedly, his mind racing with a plan to take the silver knife from Scott’s waistband.

“Danny,” Scott says, and the revenant eyes are puppy-brown instead of Abyss-black. “I can be him.” Danny freezes. This wasn’t in his grandmother’s teachings. It wasn’t in the old grimoires. “I love you, Danny,” Scott adds, the intonation of his voice changing completely, from the cold harshness of the spectre to Scott’s old self. “Please, Danny. Let me go. I just want to be with you.” Danny’s face blanched, and his knees felt weak. “We can be happy again. We can pretend none of this ever happened.”

“N-no...” Danny manages to rasp out, shaking his head slowly, as if in a trance. “Stop that.”

“C’mon, Danny. We can fix this,” Scott continues, his voice soft and warm.

Danny shakes his head over and over. “No. Stop it. You’re not him. Fucking stop that,” he mutters, unable to raise his voice, unable to meet Scott’s eyes. Instead his gaze is fixed on the floor, and it doesn’t move from there. Danny finds himself needing to support his body on the wall, not trusting his knees to hold him upright.

“You know what he thought when he was dying, Danny?” Scott goes on, back to the harsh intonation of the spectre, tilting his head like a predator studying his prey before attacking. “He thought of how much he loved you. And how much you _hurt_ him by bringing him back.” Danny’s legs give way and he falls to his knees, inches away from the edge of the magic circle. Scott kneels on the circle too, eager to keep up the conversation. “He just didn’t understand why you’d do that, Danny. He tried to understand you, but he couldn’t. He loved you so much, and felt so betrayed.”

“Shut up,” Danny rasps out, his voice cracked and weak.

“He didn’t understand how you could be so selfish. Do you know how _wrong_ it feels to be brought back like that? It’s not pain. It’s worse than pain. It’s a constant, suffocating, _unnatural_ feeling. Like everything hates you. The earth, the trees, the air, everything _loathes_ you, and it’s not even your fault. And every time you brought him back, that feeling got worse.” Scott pauses to contemplate Danny’s hands, knuckles white, digging his fingernails on the floor. “And after awhile, he just couldn’t take it anymore. A lesser man might have grown to hate you, Danny, but he never did. He always loved you, right until the end. And he felt so guilty for pulling the trigger...”

“Stop it,” Danny whispers, shaking with rage and guilt.

“He’s gone for good, you know. That’s why you can’t see his ghost around here. You tore up his soul so bad God knows if he’ll get into the afterlife now,” the revenant says with an expression of fake concern on his face.

“What?!” Danny snaps his head up and yells out.

“Oh, yes. Didn’t they tell you? Every time you brought him back, you shredded part of his soul. When you brought him back that last time, you tore up what little of his soul remained,” Scott explains with a wide, sadistic smile.

“No. No, that can’t be right. No,” Danny shakes his head vehemently.

“Oh, you poor bastard,” Scott says, and the pity is almost genuine. There is a pause, where Danny’s unfocused miasma of rage swirls around him like a maelstrom waiting to form, like a tornado still unshaped. “Don’t worry, nobody has to know. It’ll be our little secret,” the revenant adds complicitly, and smiles, sharply and cruelly. Danny’s rage coalesces into cold, crystallised _murder_. It brings a sudden clarity to Danny’s mind, clearing away the fog of guilt and horror and shock. It lets him plan. “It’ll be you and me, Danny. I can be _just_ like him.”

“Yeah?” Danny asks timidly. The revenant smiles in cruel triumph.

“Definitely,” Scott replies, and his intonation changes once again to old Scott’s. “I love you, Danny. Remember when I proposed to you during our vacations in Hawaii?” Danny stares fascinated, as Scott’s face becomes the perfect mask of adoration and warmth. “I told you I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. I told you I wanted to raise a family with you and grow old together.” Danny nods, practically ensorcelled, and inches closer to Scott. “We can still do that, Danny. We can adopt a baby boy or a baby girl, and get a dog... you know how much I love dogs, right, Danny?” Danny nods again, slowly leaning forward. “That’s right. We’ll turn the guest bedroom into a nursery. Stiles will be the godfather and Lydia will be the godmother.” Danny leans forward even more, his face a few inches from Scott’s.

“That sounds lovely,” Danny whispers, mesmerised, as he slowly inches forward.

“But it’s just you and me now. I think we deserve a rest, right, Danny?” Scott asks, leaning forward as much as the magic of the circle will allow him. His face is so close to Danny’s. They can almost kiss. “We can go upstairs...” Scott mutters suggestively, and waits for Danny to close the distance between them.

Danny does. He kisses Scott slowly but firmly. It’s a numb kiss at first, but Danny gradually melts into it. His hands run through Scott’s hair, down Scott’s back, under Scott’s shirt...

And they grab the hilt of the silver knife. Scott’s eyes open suddenly, but it’s too late. Danny pulls out the silver knife from Scott’s jeans and lunges for a stab. He tackles Scott to the floor, knife digging into Scott’s stomach, and hears the revenant howl in ungodly agony. He feels strong hands bruising his arms, but he takes out the silver knife and stabs again. It’s not enough, Danny knows. he has to reach the heart, but it’s easier said than done. The knife slips against the sternum and the rib-cage, and he can’t quite get the angle to slip it between Scott’s ribs. Instead, he tries an upward angle from below the sternum, but the position is awkward. At least there’s no blood. Small mercies.

He’s so focused in his task that he doesn’t see Scott reaching for the kitchen knife.

Danny manages to sink the blade deep enough, and at the right angle, and pierces the heart. The revenant lets out a supernatural, unholy screech and lashes out at Danny with the kitchen knife. Danny feels a sharp, hot pain and he stumbles away, clutching the right side of his neck.

He sees blood on the wall, and blinks, confused. It looks fresh. He sees more blood on the floor, trailing from Scott’s limp body to his current position. He looks down and sees a large bloodstain on his shirt. It takes him awhile to feel the warm blood on his hand, slipping through his fingers.

Danny collapses to the floor wholly against his volition. He has every intention of crawling towards the kitchen and calling 911, but the entire hallway starts swimming and his muscles stop responding. He ends up lying down on his side, feeling the side of his face growing wet as the blood pool around him grows bigger and bigger. His vision blurs and he thinks of Scott. He hopes the spectre was lying and he didn’t deprive Scott of whatever awaited them in the afterlife. He feels it tremendously unfair that he gets to have an afterlife, good or bad, after everything he did, while Scott doesn’t.

It is then that he smells Scott’s aftershave, right under his nose. His shampoo as well, and the combination of all the smells that make up Scott. His heart skips a beat and he dares to hope that Scott wasn’t completely gone, he was just so weak that not even necromancers could see him.

“Scott...” Danny manages to utter through bloodied lips. “I’m... sorry...”

There’s a weak, almost imperceptible change in the air, like a very small current, and then a touch on his cheek. Warm and soft, like Scott’s lips. Danny’s eyes tear up, and he feels something, like a thumb, wiping one of the tears away.

“S-sorry...” Danny tries again, and he feels cold, very cold. No part of his body answers him anymore, and even speaking is incredibly difficult; but if it is really Scott’s faint presence around him, he _needs_ to apologise. It might be the last chance he has. He tries speaking again, but all he manages is a harsh groan.

“It’s okay,” Danny hears as the house around him fades to white. Scott’s voice.

“Scott,” he tries to say, and he hears himself speaking out loud, but he can’t feel himself speaking. “I’m so sorry,” his voice seems to come from everywhere at once.

“I know,” Scott’s voice replies, and a vaguely familiar figure materialises in the whiteness. “Come on, Danny, let’s go home.”

Danny doesn’t know if it’s real or not, if that’s truly Scott or a figment of his dying imagination, but he doesn’t care.

Danny knows only that home is wherever Scott is.

So Danny goes home.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. This was certainly a thing I wrote.
> 
> Not sure how well-received this will be, but I certainly tried my best.


End file.
